Window / Departure - 2013
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Window and Departure are characterised by a series of slow, continuous tracking shots through which pictorial and geographical instability gradually unfold. The tension between stillness and movement and between real and constructed space is key to both films. Camera motion is achieved using stop motion animation and virtual cameras within reconstructed still images, later combined with CGI, 3D scanning and chromakeyed imagery.

Window and Departure conjure uncertain places, caught between interior and exterior settings. Set within abandoned architectural interiors, an unlikely ‘other’ place is suggested by projections, rudimentary props and glimpsed exteriors. It is left unstated whether these elements are imaginary ideals in the process of being constructed or the remnants of a place or vision come undone.

The work is loosely based, in terms of its thematics and the landscapes referenced, on the story of Antonin Artaud’s ill-fated 1937 trip to Ireland – a journey that began as visionary pilgrimage and retreat and ended as an episode of degradation and deportation. Of interest is the idea of what remains when the ideal collides with the real in this way, and the resonance of this to the contemporary representation of landscape.

Each piece has an individual soundtrack, intended to overlap within a single space or adjoining spaces.